Smokey the Magnificent

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be one of those angsty blog posts where I wail about my directionless life and volumeless hair. As it happens, today I finished an article about child-led weaning, made dinner (to a certain extent) and did an hour of housework, making this one of my more productive days since Operation Auxiliary Pig commenced.

No, I’m actually falling to pieces. I was eating dinner and bit down on either a bit of rock salt or possibly a piece of burned potato (see above caveat re dinner), and a chunk - or cusp, as we say in the biz - of my back molar just up and left me. And I was like “Whoa”, and had to pause Wonderfalls - which is cool, but not as awesome as Pushing Daisies - and go and shove a hand mirror in my mouth.

I saved the tooth bit in an empty pill box full of milk, but I don’t imagine we shall be reunited. Oddly enough, it doesn’t hurt… kinda put me off my dinner, though. A brief Google search informs that it will probably be capped or filled. They’d better do something - I have a razor-sharp edge that could cut my tongue to ribbons if I held it at a really peculiar angle and waggled it about, and let’s face it, I most certainly will.

So… life, innit. Tralala. Flatmate Man thinks the auxiliary pig is leaching calcium from my teeth and causing the disaster, but that seems impressively speedy for a pig who has, like, a teaspoon’s worth of bones right now. Google said it could be caused by tooth-grinding, for which I blame the snortlepig, who has recently been behaving badly… and my mother, because once when I was a child - and lying on a motel bed, I recall, though I do not know where - I ground my teeth softly for the first time ever and Mother said “Don’t grind your teeth” and I was like “Whoa, that’s grinding your teeth?” and then did it for years. True story.

On the bright side, this has given me a good baby name: Cuspid.

Well, it’s been such a hideously long time since I blogged here that there’s no way I can segue back in gracefully, so I’m just gonna do it via a Facebook-esque pretend fill-in-the-blanks quiz. K? Also, I’m only here because I’m supposed to be writing an article on child-led weaning.

I have not blogged for a hideously long time because… if I can put it real subtle-like, Operation Auxiliary Pig is go. I am eleven weeks pregnant. The previous nine weeks - gestation calculation being a weird and tricksy beast - have largely been spent horizontal, dizzy and abject. On the upside, the snortlepig has come up with a brand-new euphemism for upchucking - “spitting one’s dogs”. As in, “You gonna spit your dogs, Mummy?”. Current aversions include the smell of the butchery and fish aisles, large wodges of protein that require much chewing, and John Travolta - although the latter aversion significantly predates the pregnancy.

Also, practically my only sister got married last Saturday, which joyous occasion required me to make a dress for myself, ideally one which hinted at pregnancy rather than lax diet; a sort-of-flowergirl dress for the pig (she being cute in the face, but not responsible enough to do anything as vital as walking down the aisle); and a clockpunk wedding cake the size of THE WORLD. In between attacks of low blood pressure, of course. The smell of dried fruit soaking in sherry is strangely calming to the tum - why do you think this is? And as it turned out, the wedding cake was far more enormous than it had to be, and the father of the groom accidentally left the remains in the trunk of his car for several days after the wedding, but apparently it was still good. A really groggy fruit cake has the survival capabilities of a Twinkie made of roaches, and that is a comforting thing.

Today I reached the pinnacle of happiness when… I discovered a whole new method for cooking chicken. In the past, I’ve either made chicken stock by using the carcass from a roast, or by buying some frozen chicken carcasses from the butcher. Either way is fine - stock, yummy, frugalish. But the other day I sent Helpdesk Man out to buy the carcasses - a manly kind of task - and in his innocence he came back with a $13.99 bag of frozen chicken portions. So I was like “!” and then “.” and decided to roast the lot. So I did that, and poured off the juices into a jug, and then shredded the meat off the bones and used the bones for stock. And aha! I now had delicious stock, and enough shredded chicken meat to make toasted sammies, fried rice and a chicken pot pie, plus snacks for the pig, and a jug of delicious, nommy chicken fat with a kind of demi-glace beneath. And when you consider that a single pair of moderately-cup-sized Boneless Skinless go for $10 on a good day, this struck me as No Bad Thing. I will do this again.

My Christmas preparations are… happening. Smug? Why, yes I am. Today I bought the snortlepig’s first two presents - a packet of those twirly drinking straws to celebrate her recent mastery of drinking from them, and a pair of scissors with bees on. She also wants a baby Christmas tree. Where does one buy a baby Christmas tree? Also, this year I SWEAR I WILL MAKE STOLLEN. For the past decade and a half I have spent every year saying “Ooh, I should make stollen” and not doing it, and it has become like unto a splinter in my mind, driving me mad. Similar situation with hot cross buns, actually, but I conquered that this year.

Tomorrow night I am going to… watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One, and eat a chicken Caesar salad at a nice-looking Italian restaurant. It is exciting. It’s a shindig for a friend’s birthday, but unfortunately she is inviting several friends I do not know, and they will probably be competent and scary and have coordinated handbags and haircuts that are actually styled, and maybe know secret things about bronzer that I do not. So I am naturally angsting about what to wear, and the pregnancy issue isn’t really helping; but in a fit of feminine competitiveness, I have decided to wash my hair. Only I was supposed to do it tonight and I forgot. I will, though. Probably. Or I could just pretend I had taken a vow.

The snortlepig is currently singing… “You Raise Me Up”. Only it’s “I am scared when I am on your shoulders”, which makes a deal o’ sense.

When your snortlepig’s library book about Homes features a mole in a burrow and she has never heard of moles, being in the Antipodes, and says “Oooh, possum!”, do not do a Google image search for “mole” in order to give her a crash course on the species. You will see things you will wish you could unsee.

…that it’s possible to sneeze so hard you stagger backwards?

I learned this yesterday. Most fun I’ve had in weeks. I seem to be on my fifth cold of the season, which makes me feel like this.

Well, it seems I have once again caught the lurgy. I know, right? That’s what, the fourth plague this winter? It’ll be my livestock next.

Anyway, I stayed home this morning from Bible study to convalesce, but convalescing with the snortlepig is only half-relaxing. Take our most recent conversation, in which she climbed up onto the bed with the phone and shoved it in my face.

SNORTLEPIG: Say “Hello Gran!”

ME [blearily]: Hello, Gran.

SNORTLEPIG: Say “Hello Gwampfa!”

ME: Hello, Grandpa.

SNORTLEPIG: Say “Hello Gussie Pussy!”

ME [resigned]: Hello, Gussie Pussy.

SNORTLEPIG: Say “Hello Nimbus Pussy!”

ME: Hello, Nimbus Pussy.

SNORTLEPIG [with a mischievous grin]: Say “church”!

ME: Church.

SNORTLEPIG [taken aback; shoves the phone into my mouth; menacingly:] Eat it.

She has also developed a habit of stealing my hanky and flinging it as far away as she can. This morning she flung it off the bed, and when I requested she retrieve it she giggled and hid under the blankets on her tummy, and then fell asleep for half an hour. When she woke up, the first thing she did was kick me in the spine, then said “I threw Mummy’s hanky!” in a pleased sort of way, then leaped on my chest and said “I smell TASTY-GREAT! A bit of tiny milks?”

Anyway, I’m fine really, thank you for asking. My eyes feel like they’re being poached in their sockets, but that could be because I spent yesterday reading all of Jane Eyre and most of Wikipedia’s paranormal section. In combination, these are not calming to the psyche. I’d forgotten how cracking Jane Eyre is, though; I hadn’t read it for years. It has, like, banter. Actual banter. Not RAF banter, which is the best banter there is, but genuine banter nonetheless. Where did Charlotte get it from, do you think? Also, the truth is out there, I am beginning to honestly suspect. Srsly. It kind of makes me want to become the President, but they probably wouldn’t tell me the juicy stuff even if I did. Pesks.

I just discovered this a few days ago. Stupendously awesome.

Also, I woke up fine and perky yesterday morning and within an hour had developed a hideous, bone-aching, chilling, nauseous, eyeball-stabby, headachey, hysterical flu. Not impressed. I am somewhat better today, but it doesn’t really matter; I already told my little sister on the phone what must be done with my remains and personal possessions.

I write you all from a haze of cheem. A few weeks ago I rashly agreed to make a last-minute wedding cake for my sister’s friend, and what do I do but contract septicaebola three days before the big event. The batch of cake batter I mixed up this morning contains 1 kg butter, 6 cups of caster sugar, four blocks of chocolate and not less than four parts per million of my own personal pus, mucus and other bodily fluids. Something old, something new, something fetid, a bit of goo, as the old saying goes. I’m supposed to be making icing roses right now, but whenever I try to alight from the couch I see this

and my brain goes

and I have to pass out for a bit.

It is dis one. (Drat. Classified just expired.)

Now we just have to…

• try to coerce some poor homestay student into staying with us
• break the news to our current landlords, who were hoping we wouldn’t need to move until nearly November
• switch over Internet
• redirect our mail
• pack up all our belongings, decluttering as needed
• buy (preferably through bartering loaves of bread or Helpdesk Man’s soul or summat, being a bit strapped for cash) a mattress, some bookshelves, a desk lamp, two desks, three chests of drawers and a drier in order to accomodate our new arrangements and the homestay student
• come up with the dosh for 3 week’s bond plus 1 week’s rent (see above and cash-strappedness)
• clean the house
• scrape paint off various windows and floors from dodgy paint jobs
• get someone in to clean the carpet to erase the presence of the snortlepig
• find someone to babysit the chickens, as Mother (who kindly agreed to adopt them if the landlord didn’t fancy the idea, which he doesn’t) is away for moving week
• empty the garage, oh my

and… am I missing anything? All before October 2.

But still. A house. Yay. Better than a dose of swine flu, I always say… with conviction and fervor these days, as it happens.

Unsurprisingly, this week’s challenge is to finish the smegging baby quilt. And also to eat three lots of yoghurt, because it is good for the squish and better than my current practice of accidentally skipping breakfast six days out of seven. And to return a certain overdue library book before the bailiffs come a-knocking. And to get my Bible study homework done in good time for once. And not to die of swine flu.

I woke up today feeling surprisingly un-dead. That’s un-dead with a hyphen, meaning “didn’t die of swine flu during the night”, not undead all-one-word, meaning “heightened senses, intoxicated by the scent of blood and at one with an all-consuming darkness”, just for the record. Although that too, of course; who isn’t? Anyway I was able to do some sewing, and am pleased to report that I successfully constructed a 2-D fabric birdhouse all on my ownsome. With the little hole for the door, and everything. This quilt is proving to be a very useful training tool; I can applique like a fish now. How did the universe stagger along before the invention of double-sided interfacing?

Also, I was wondering: at a guess, how many songs do you know? Well enough to sing with, say, 80% accuracy: not just being able to hum along to the chorus. It occurs to me that counting musicals, hymns, folk songs, Christmas carols and the like I could well know upwards of a thousand. The oeuvres of the Everly Brothers and the Seekers alone make up a good few dozen, and I don’t even know all their songs. I wonder how much brain power the average joe today must use up on accidentally memorising songs: and how many of said songs he actually likes? I wonder, also, how many of said thousand songs I would be able to remember if a gangster tied me to a bridge, put a gun to the rope and told me to sing constantly for 24 hours, with no pauses and no repeats, on pain of sleeping with the fishes. Would my brain give out before my voice? Well, not currently, ’cause my voice is on the fritz due to the aforementioned swine flu. Would make an interesting film though, no? Like that one about the cellphone.. “If the signal dies, so does she”. Or not, possibly: I didn’t see it. Meryl Streep should star in it, she’s smashing. Streep. Streep streep streep. Is that her real name? “Streep Throat”, it could be called. Gosh, I’m feeling a bit ooey.

I think I’ll sit down quite calmly and blanket-stitch some wings on a fabric birdie while watching Lois and Clark.